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MI5 may face new torture inquiry

AS befits Britain's most senior spy, Jonathan Evans is noted in Whitehall for being cool under fire. That quality will be tested this week when MI5's director-general learns whether his service is about to be engulfed by one of the biggest crises in its 100-year history.

For the past 10 weeks a senior lawyer in the office of Baroness Scotland, the attorney-general, has been studying the cases of five British men alleged to have been unlawfully detained and tortured in Pakistan with the complicity of MI5.

Scotland may rule there is insufficient evidence to call in detectives but if she does refer the cases to the police, it could in effect paralyse the agency that Evans has led since 2007.

Some observers think it might even threaten Evans's position. He ran G branch, MI5's international terrorism section, at the time of many of the torture claims.